About

Yasemin Ipek conducted her fieldwork between 2012 and 2015 in Beirut, Lebanon where she explored intergenerational moral discourses and political imaginaries on “sectarian” and “non-sectarian” Lebanon in the shadow of the devastating Syrian war and refugee flow. Unpacking how middle-class urban elites and unemployed young people from marginalized communities participate within vibrant cross-sectarian publics in Beirut, Yasemin’s work focuses on the emergent practices of ethical citizenship articulated through crisis, suspension, confusion and hope. Her analysis of ethical citizenship as an entrepreneurial activist project demonstrates that nationalism, which was proposed as a remedy for sectarian polarization and state dysfunction, obscures social inequality, marginalizes Syrian refugees and reinscribes racialized, gendered and class-based hierarchies. She completed a second PhD degree in the Department of Political Science, Bilkent University where she studied political memoirs, politics of morality and conservative nationalism in the early Republican Turkey. Before coming to Stanford, she completed two BA degrees at Bogazici University, in Political Science and Sociology respectively, along with an MA degree in Political Science.